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Nightline Association: What We Do

Every year, the Nightline Association helps Nightline Services around the country take over 30,000 calls from students in emotional distress, looking for information, or needing someone to talk to.

Nightline is here, every night of term, so that every student has access to confidential, non-judgemental emotional peer support.

The Nightline Association was established to support, promote and develop university Nightline services across the country.

Good Practice Guidelines

The Nightline Association good practice guidelines were created to raise the professionalism of Nightline Services. They were developed in partnership with Nightline Services, mental health professionals, legal advisors, Samaritans, and the Helplines Partnership.

These guidelines enable Nightlines to check that they are operating according to good practice. They support Nightlines to run their services legally, safely and with duty of care to callers and volunteers.

The guidelines embrace the need for each Nightline to be able to meet the needs of their students and universities while offering the highest quality service for students. Listening Services who meet our good practice guidelines and have considered every eventuality become accredited and can use the Nightline name.

The benefits of being GPG accredited…

  • Assurance that your Nightline is operating legally and at a professional standard.
  • The provision of a higher duty of care both to callers and Nightline volunteers.
  • Improved relations with your stakeholders by showing them the quality of your Nightline service.
  • Increased funding opportunities.
  • The use of the Good Practice Guidelines logo on your website and microsite.

Training for Nightlines

Every Nightline listening volunteer undergoes extensive training before they take calls and all nightlines offer support and supervision to new volunteers. Our Good Practice Guidelines give guidance on how volunteers should be trained, supported and supervised.

Since 2019, all Nightlines’ can access dedicated suicide calls training which we developed in collaboration with the Charlie Waller Trust. This specialise training gives listening volunteers the knowledge, tools and skills to respond more competently and confidently to students who express suicidal thoughts.

“Nightline provides an important source of help for students in crisis and Charlie Waller Memorial Trust has been very pleased to partner with them to develop evidence-based training for Nightline volunteers, who will also benefit from this knowledge when they leave university and begin work.”

Clare Stafford, Chief Executive Officer, Charlie Waller Trust

For Universities and Students’ Unions

There are multiple reasons why someone may call Nightline, including academic stress, family, relationships, friendships, mental health, suicide, self-harm, information, lonliness, sexuality, sexual health, violence, abuse, addiction and physical health.

We have worked closely with Tender and White Ribbon to offer specialised sexual violence training to our volunteers. In partnership with the Charlie Waller Trust, we have also developed bespoke training for our volunteers supporting conversations around suicide.

%

felt their mental wellbeing had improved

%

felt better able to deal with their problem

%

felt calmer, less agitated, or less anxious

Why Peer Support?

  • Empowers service users and breaks down isolation.
  • Develops supporters’ confidence and self-esteem.
  • Increases capacity of professional services and aids social reintergration.

“The quality of training that has been organised by Nightline is excellent. It would not be out of place as part of a training course for a range of mental health care professionals. This adds to student employability development for trainees, and crucially means that those students using Nightline receive high-quality care and support.”

Professor Graham Towl, Professor of Forensic Psychology, Durham University

Set Up a Nightline

Are you interested in setting up a Nightline Service at your institution? We want to see every student having access to a Nightline Service and work with Universities and Students Unions to support them in the setup and development of their Nightline listening service.

Find out more about setting up a Nightline, and get in touch with our setup team!

Find out more

Nightlines and Nightline Association

Nightline services work with their local university communities; they are our student volunteers answering calls and offering a listening ear.

The Nightline Associaion works on a more strategic-level; supporting new setups, developing external relationships, overseeing our Good Practice Guidelines accreditation, maintaining our IT srrvices and representing the student voice. We host events every year which offer training and networking opportunities for our affiliated services, as well as hosting our Council and AGM sessions.